


"So a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead are all in love with a circus freak..."

by mandaleigh92



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Barton Farm, Bootycall, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Multi, OT4, Unexpected Visitors, everyone is married and nothing hurts, let's embarrass Clint Barton, polyship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-19 10:49:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7358203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandaleigh92/pseuds/mandaleigh92
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobbi Morse shows up at the Barton Farm, unaware of her ex-husband's marital situation</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [nor need we power or splendor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4053391) by [shellybelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellybelle/pseuds/shellybelle). 



> This may be ongoing. This may be it. IDK man I just needed some Bobbi Morse showing up at the Barton Farm. This meshes in somewhere in the canon of "nor need we power or splendor" by shellybelle which is A++ Barton Farm. Like seriously, it's so good I often forget it isn't actually MCU canon. Anyway. Trying to pick up somewhere after that left off, but pre-Civil War, and marry the MCU and Agents of Shield while introducing some sprinkling of comic canon.

The women in Clint Barton’s life each evoked a specific feeling, a set of emotions and instincts and indirect memories.

Laura was home. She was sunrise slipping in the kitchen window during the first cup of coffee in the morning. She was opening the door at the end of a long day to a house full of happy noise. She was Cooper’s first birthday party, and the relief after Lila’s first stomach bug. She was fresh-picked strawberries at the end of spring and the first pumpkin pie of the fall. She was sweet, she was kind, and she brought out the best of everyone she met.

Nat was clarity. She was the pull of a bow string, and the zing of adrenaline when he hit his mark. She was a sharp inhale of fresh air after the rain ends. She was a long motorcycle ride on a coastal highway. She was perching on top of the Empire State building at sunset, with the city thrumming quietly down below. She was she was the blissful kind of achy tired that came after sparring and after lovemaking—with Nat, they were similar enough that it was hard to pinpoint which she reminded him of more. 

Bobbi was…well, Bobbi. She was the pit in your stomach before jumping out of a plane. She was air getting kicked out of your lungs. She was a rock in your shoe or an itch on your back that won’t go away. She was the anxiety of running out of arrows mid-mission. She was one of those nightmares where you’re suddenly naked in front of the whole school. She was trying to send an arrow through a flaming hoop to shoot an apple off of a showgirl’s head while swinging upside down from trapeze in a sold-out three-ring circus. But she was also the rush of free-fall, a tiger stalking prey, the pure lusty adrenaline and danger of a fight. She was youth and excitement embodied. Most of all, she scared Clint more than the Chitauri and Ultron combined, and left Clint feeling like chewed gum on the sidewalk after she left. And she always left. And Clint, being Clint, was a glutton for punishment.

So when she appeared on his doorstep a few months after his decision to retire, wearing a pale blue plaid shirt unbuttoned to nearly her navel and pair of dangerously short cutoffs that could barely qualify as pants, Clint’s first instinct was to vomit. 

“Hey, Cowboy. My tractor broke down about a mile up the road and I need a big strong man to help me finish the harvest,” she said, in a husky drawl that she’d clearly been practicing. She leaned against the doorframe and twirled the end of her braid at him while he tried in vain to scoop his jaw off the floor. 

“What the fu…heck are you doing here?” he caught himself, very aware that Cooper and Lila’s playful shrieks in the next room had gone conspicuously quiet when he answered the door. 

“You didn’t call. I missed you. So I did the only logical thing and had a hacker friend find your location. You really should ramp-up your cyber security if you don’t want unexpected visitors. What is this, anyway, some kind of safe house?”

“Well, uh…” he started, and a little scramble of feet and a happy shriek as Natasha chased Cooper and Lila into the room answered the question before he could.

“Oh. That’s news,” she said, scrambling to button her shirt up, a flush of color hitting her cheeks. Natasha snapped to full alert, standing upright and taking a step in front of the kids. 

“…Morse? What are you doing here?” she asked, ice in her voice. After SHIELD fell, neither of them had heard from Bobbi, other than rumblings of a tall, dark-haired woman who carried a pair of batons running security in a Hydra lab. 

“Uh. I actually don’t know. I’m gonna go now…” she said, backing away, when Lila ran up and tugged on Clint’s hand.

“DAD. I didn’t know you knew Queen Elsa,” she said, in a harsh reprimanding whisper that was uncannily Laura. Clint glanced up at Bobbi. Pale blue eyes, Disney princess features, blue shirt, blonde hair in a long braid tossed over her shoulder…and he laughed. Bobbi froze in her tracks, caught completely off-guard. 

“No, Lila, sweetheart, that’s not Queen Elsa. That’s my uh….friend, Bobbi. She is pretty frosty, though,” he explained, and Bobbi shot Clint a look that definitely didn’t help her case.

“Is she an Avenger too?” Lila asked, eyeing Bobbi, unconvinced that the stranger wouldn’t actually shoot ice daggers at them. Bobbi awkwardly shook her head and started to answer, but before she could, Laura came down stairs, fresh out of the bath tub, running a towel through her wet hair. 

“Clint, was that Mike at the door? He was supposed to come pick up…oh. Not Mike. Hello. Who are you?” she said, taking a step toward her husband and placing a protective hand on Lila’s shoulder. 

“Agent Morse was just leaving.” Natasha growled from behind them, Cooper still clung to her side as she squared her shoulders. 

“Agent Morse? As in Bobbi Morse?” Laura asked, eyes darting from Natasha to the strange, Amazonian blonde on her doorstep. If the situation hadn’t been awkward enough before, it was palpable now. Suffocating.

“Guilty as charged,” Bobbi answered, flustered and embarrassed, “I’ll be on my way now, clearly coming here was a huge mistake.”

“Oh, nonsense, come in. I’ve heard enough pieces of stories that I have a million questions for you. Pardon the mess, Nate’s been teething and none of us really have felt like picking up after certain people,” Laura said, shooting Cooper and Lila a look that sent them both off in an awkward shuffle of scooping up toys and clutter. She took Bobbi by the hand and practically dragged her into the kitchen. Bobbi gave Clint a pleading look, and he shrugged, smirking, very pleased with both of his wives for their protective nature. 

“Do you think that’s wise? With those Hydra rumors?” Nat asked him once they were out of earshot.

“Bobbi is nothing if not loyal, Nat. She’d never be Hydra. If I recall correctly, that’s why you recruited her.” Natasha scowled, and followed the others into the kitchen. 

“So, uhm, Mrs. Barton, how many kids do you have?”

“Oh, please, call me Laura. And just the three. What, Clint hasn’t been sending you all the pictures?” Laura buzzed, pouring coffee, gathering snacks, clearly anxious, but hiding it quite well. So well that anyone short of a super-spy wouldn’t be able to tell—given present company, however, she was completely vulnerable.

“Clint and I haven’t talked in a while. I thought I’d come by and surprise him since it’s been so long. I wasn’t expecting he’d be so…domesticated?”

Laura handed a mug to Bobbi, and set Clint’s down in front of him a little harder than necessary.

“Sorry. That was the wrong word. The Clint Barton I know is very different from the one in this room right now,” Bobbi said, staring into her mug, looking very small.

“Damn straight,” Natasha said under her breath to no one in particular, nonchalantly sipping a mug of tea and leaning on the door frame that separated the kitchen from the living room, where Cooper and Lila were playing video games. Laura lightly smacked her wife on the shoulder.

“We understand Clint is a man of many faces,” Laura said, stealing a sip from Nat’s mug while her own tea steeped. She took a moment to take in Bobbi Morse, who to this point had been a myth. Someone that Clint flew off to periodically, for a few days at a time, and came home from silent, morose, distracted. These forays had been much more frequent when Laura and Clint had first met, and dwindled over the years until finally disappearing all together shortly after Cooper was born. She’d been the great secret, until after years of arm twisting Laura had finally managed to coax a name out of her husband other than “Detroit” or “LA.” Even more years and she managed to get the words “SHIELD Agent” and “first wife” out of him. 

And now, here she was, sitting at Laura Barton’s table, intently starting into her cup of coffee. She wasn’t at all what Laura had expected—someone dark and mysterious, deadly, more predator than person, who toyed with men the way a cat might paw at a mouse. But in reality, there was something familiar about her. There was something Laura couldn’t quite pinpoint that reminded her of Steve—something in the space she occupied and way her shoulders squared, even when she was trying to appear small. Something about her face (which looked barely older than Wanda’s) carried a deeper understanding and age she shouldn’t possess. Most of all, something deeply vulnerable that she was trying desperately to conceal, but struggling in the circumstances. 

“So uhm, Laura, how long have you two been living out here?” she asked, looking up at Laura, trying to get a read on the situation. Those ice-blue eyes seemed to cut straight to Laura’s core on a glance, which reminded her of a different Avenger, one who was currently fidgeting with a now empty mug and posturing herself very territorially in the doorway. 

“This was my grandmother’s farm, actually. It’s been in the family for years, but we took it over just after I got pregnant with Cooper,” Laura said, taking the tea bag out of her mug and taking a seat next to Clint, “Did Clint give you the address?”

“No,” Clint and Bobbi said in unison, both defensive. Clint was wounded, offended even, at the idea that his wife would even suspect him of willingly bringing Bobbi into their space. Bobbi was defensive, echoing the same—she clearly didn’t know before coming that this was a family space.

“No, I had to have a hacker friend trace the last email I got from Clint. It wasn’t an easy place to find, I promise you that,” Bobbi reassured, “I will have her make sure she didn’t leave any holes that might leave you vulnerable.”

“Good,” Natasha grunted. The four sat in silence for a moment, when Nate started crying through the baby monitor. Laura went to go get him. 

With Laura gone, Natasha slid into action, grabbing a knife out of the block on the counter and pinning it to Bobbi’s throat in one swift motion that caught Clint off guard. This was a side Natasha had NEVER showed on the farm, especially with the kids in the next room.

“You have exactly sixty seconds to convince me you’re not Hydra before I end you right here, and I promise you that neither of us wants to answer to Laura for killing a spy at her kitchen table,” Natasha snarled, and Clint stood quickly.

“Not Hydra, SHIELD. Went deep cover into Hydra working for SHIELD after the fall,” Bobbi blurted, “I’d never betray SHIELD, you of all people should know that Romanoff.” 

“SHIELD died with Fury,” Natasha whispered harshly, pressing the knife a little harder.

“Fury isn’t dead,” Bobbi retorted, “but I don’t work for him, I work for Coulson. Fury gave all his intel to Coulson, appointed him director, then went off grid.”

Natasha and Clint stared at each other briefly. Coulson? 

“Oh, yeah, Coulson’s not dead either. Fury brought him back after New York. He doesn’t want either of you to know that for some reason, so you didn’t hear it from me.”

Natasha wasn’t used to missing pieces, and Coulson somehow being alive seemed like a pretty big piece of the puzzle. While it was hard to take Bobbi at face value, it was something that would be too difficult to sell as a lie. Too specific. Clint, equally surprised but less caught off guard, gave his wife a nod. Natasha loosened her stance, and slowly dropped the knife from Bobbi’s throat. The stairs creaked in the next room, and Laura made her way back toward the kitchen.

“This conversation isn’t over,” Natasha whispered through a forced smile, and replaced the knife in the block just before Laura stepped back into the room, Nate whimpering in her arms. 

“So, Bobbi, will you be staying for dinner?” Laura asked, and Clint’s eyes went wide and his face went beet red. 

“No,” Bobbi and Natasha answered in unison. While they couldn’t be more physically different, in that moment they might as well have been twins. Their eyes narrowed and their bodies tensed identically, and it took everything Laura had not to laugh hysterically.

“You have a type,” she jeered at Clint.

“Do not,” he said, voice muffled as he hid his face in his hands. 

“Points for variety though,” Laura continued. It wasn’t often she got the upper hand to tease three super spies at once, “What’s that joke? A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead all walk into a bar…”

Bobbi barked out a laugh, “that joke would be Clint Barton.” 

At that, Clint slammed his head down on the kitchen table, and all three women shared a laugh for the first time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, Bobbi, in all the time I’ve known you, this is possibly the first time I’ve understood you.” Clint stood, settling the baby on one side of him. “Come on, let’s go downstairs. Dinner is probably just about ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS YOU ARE GREAT! There are over 300 of you who read this. That's SO MANY. Like roughly 293 more than I expected. You're the best. Here's some sad feels but I promise you it's gonna get happier eventually. Once everyone gets angry they're gonna get sexy then they're gonna get happy.

Rain started to fall as Laura made dinner—spaghetti and garlic bread and Italian sausage, because it was quick and easy—and did her best to not let herself think too long or hard about why her husband’s ex-wife apparently didn’t know she existed until today. Natasha hovered, pretending to help cook as an excuse to monitor Laura’s anxiety, only drifting from her side to check on the kids periodically, who were sitting on the floor in the living room, deeply engrossed in a movie.

Bobbi and Clint sat behind the kids, as far away from each other as possible. Bobbi was perfectly still on the couch, flipping through a magazine maintaining a visible cool, while Clint was trying not to squirm in an arm chair, eyes darting from the cartoons to Bobbi to the kitchen doorway. Other than the sounds of the TV and the rain, the house was completely quiet—not something that happened often, and it definitely made Clint uncomfortable. He was almost relieved when Nate shrieked upstairs, waking from his nap, and practically sprinted up to the bedroom to go get him.

Clint scooped Nate up in his arms and gave him a teething ring, which Nate happily accepted and mouthed at between whimpers. Clint held the baby to his chest, bouncing gently up and down and humming a nondescript lullaby which turned the whimpers to coos.

“I hear rubbing a little schnapps on their gums helps with teething,” Bobbi’s voice whispered from the doorway and Clint about jumped out of his skin.

“I can think of a few people in this house who could make better use of schnapps right about now,” he responded, turning to face the wall opposite from the door.

“You’re good with him,” she said, her voice soft and warm, and Clint’s grip on Nate tightened ever so slightly.

“It only took me three tries to figure a few things out.” He continued to refuse to look at her, instead watching the rain fall outside. Bobbi hung back and took a moment to absorb what she was looking at in this bedroom: the handmade quilts, the antique furniture, the laundry and baby things strewn around, the green farm and red barn just outside the window. And there, in the center, was Clint, holding a baby that shared his eyes, a perfect centerpiece to the Norman Rockwell image. She, however, lingered in the doorway, practically glued. She was painfully aware that this wasn’t her space, and she didn’t belong in this picture.

“Look, Barton, I’m really happy for you. I never imagined you retiring, and I definitely never imagined you as mister family man. But it suits you. It suits you really well, actually, and I’m really happy for you, and I’m sorry for showing up here and spoiling it,” she said, resisting the tears that threatened to well up behind her eyes. Clint sat down on the edge of the bed and sat Nate on his lap. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have, nor one he’d ever imagined having. Especially not in the bedroom he shared with Nat and Laura. 

“Why did you come here, Bobbi? I haven’t seen you or heard from you since…”

“Florence. It’s been since Florence,” Bobbi finished for him. Florence had been their last trip together, just before Cooper was born. They’d had a brief mission, an easy security job for a bomb threat that had turned out to be a fake, and that was the trip Clint had intended to tell her about Laura and Nat and the life they were building together. Bobbi had beaten him to the punch, dropping the “I’m engaged to Hunter” bomb in a hastily written note, left on a hotel pillow a full day before she’d been scheduled to leave.

“Yeah. Then all this Avengers stuff happened…”

“Your plate seemed full. Mine was too,” she offered, doing her best to sound detached.

“You traded me in for a younger model,” he spat.

“We were married for all of five minutes, and you weren’t exactly a one-woman man from the day we met, either, nor were you honest about it,” she threw back and he shot her a glare that pierced her like an arrow. She wasn’t sure what reaction she was looking for, but that wasn’t it. “Look…I’m sorry. The last thing I wanted was to come into your house and attack you. Or not like this, anyway. More attack you in the fun way.”

Clint made a sound that was somewhere halfway between a chuckle and a scoff. A long, heavy pause hung in the air for a moment, Nathaniel’s gurgling the only thing breaking the quiet. 

“You didn’t answer the question,” Clint mustered.

“What question?”

“Why did you come here?” 

Bobbi looked at her feet for a moment before starting, “I wasn’t completely honest downstairs at the table with Romanoff. Everything I said is true, but the story goes on.”

Clint sighed heavily. This was far from a surprise. There was always more to the story when it came to Bobbi Morse. 

“There was a mission in Russia. A SHIELD mission, under the radar…Hunter and I took it together. It was supposed to be recon but we ended up stopping an assassination, and got caught because of it.” She took another deep breath. “We were disavowed. Chose to be, actually. So we could stop running, learn to be ourselves again, build a life. Like you’ve got here. Hunter wants that and he deserves it.”

“And what do you want?” Clint asked, not missing a beat. Bobbi wasn’t the only expert interrogator in the room.

“Well…I’m here, and not with him, which should say something.” 

“It does, but I’m not sure exactly what the message is. Reception is a little fuzzy on my end.”

“I just…I do want it. A life, to be a person. I’m just tired. I’m tired of the whole world being on my shoulders. I’m tired of not knowing who I am without the spy life. But I want to make sure there’s no loose ends before I try to figure it out, and you…”

“I’m a loose end.”

“Yeah.” Bobbi’s heart skipped a beat admitting it, but it was true. A lot had been left unsaid between her and Clint, and she had been in a mood lately to mend fences. She and Hunter had agreed to meet in a week after they’d both done just that—he was going to the UK to touch base with family, and she had told him she would be doing the same. Skye had agreed to help her—through multiple proxies and false online identities, of course—and had gotten her the coordinates.

“You know, Bobbi, in all the time I’ve known you, this is possibly the first time I’ve understood you.” Clint stood, settling the baby on one side of him. “Come on, let’s go downstairs. Dinner is probably just about ready.” 

———————————

Laura heard the baby cry, then loud, fast footsteps as Clint ran up the stairs. She shook her head at her husband’s predictable awkward clumsiness—it was a wonder he was a spy, because when he was at home, the man moved with all the quiet and grace of a three-legged elephant. 

She wouldn’t have noticed the quieter footsteps following him up if she hadn’t been listening very intently (the fourth stair creaked, something Clint had been swearing he would fix since they’d moved in). Laura froze, suddenly stiff and alarmed. Suddenly perfectly aware that there was a stranger in the house, someone who had influence and knowledge of her husband that she never would. A whole life she didn’t know about. A relationship, deep understanding, and a twisted form of love she would never be a part of. And that person was currently headed toward her bedroom, where her husband and baby were. 

“Myshka, what’s wrong?” Natasha asked, already knowing the answer.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear,” Laura said, still frozen, piece of bread in one hand and knife loaded with butter in the other.

“I know, Laura. I know, I don’t like it either, but they have things to talk out.” 

“Why upstairs, though? Why in our bedroom?” Laura’s voice was starting to quaver. Alarm bells were going off in her brain left and right. 

“Do you want me to go up there, haul her down, make her disappear? We’d have a particularly beautiful tomato crop next year but I can’t guarantee it won’t traumatize the kids…” Natasha said, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Laura’s ear. Laura eased with the comfort and familiarity of the motion, and resumed buttering the bread. 

“No, I guess you’re right. I just don’t like it. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

“What is?” Natasha picked up a piece of bread and joined in the buttering. 

“Of all the people we’ve had in this house, soldiers, spies, literal gods, and a basically omnipotent teenager, Bobbi Morse is the only one who has ever scared me.” Laura said, tossing the bread down on the cookie sheet. 

“Considering I recruited and trained her, I’d take that as a compliment under different circumstances,” Nat said, raising an eyebrow, gauging Laura’s reaction out of the corner of her eye.

“I didn’t know that,” was all she said, arranging bread on the sheet.

“Yeah. Laura, I promise you, she poses no threat to you or to our family, physically or emotionally. If I thought she did, she’d be gone.” Natasha placed a hand protectively on the small of Laura’s back, and Laura seemingly ignored it, instead meticulously sprinkling garlic and herbs on the buttered bread. 

“Do we want regular or cheesy garlic bread?” she asked, trying and failing to ignore the continued alarm bells. 

“Cheesy. Laura, I know you don’t trust her. I don’t either. But I trust Clint, even around her. So I need you to trust me, okay? They haven’t spoken since before Cooper was born,” Natasha reassured. Laura grabbed some shredded mozzarella out of the fridge, left over from pizza night, and sprinkled it on the bread before sliding the sheet into the oven. 

“How do you know, though? How do you know he hasn’t been sneaking it, hiding it?”

“He may be a spy, but he’s a terrible liar, especially when it comes to you and to me. And I may or may not have been periodically checking up on her for the last twelve or so years.” Natasha smirked, fairly proud of herself, but Laura’s shoulders shrunk. Nat put one hand on her hip, and the other under her chin, turning her face to look at her. 

“Laura, look at me. Clint chose a long time ago. He chose this life, those kids, me, and most importantly, he chose you. And he’s a man of his word if nothing else. And he and Bobbi are a lot alike in that sense, and she’s now in love with someone else. So while I don’t know why she’s here now or what she wants, I sincerely doubt it’s to ruin her own life and drag him down with her. Understand?” Laura softened, and wrapped her arms around Natasha’s waist, settling her head on her wife’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” Laura said, voice muffled as her face was buried. Natasha kissed her head and rubbed her back. 

“Better get that cheesy bread out before it burns or Lila will be devastated,” Natasha whispered softly, not really wanting the hug to end but knowing that Laura needed to keep moving in order to keep the panic at bay. It was how she’d been as long as Natasha knew her—when Laura was upset or anxious, she washed windows, baked cookies, canned things, made lists. She processed things through being productive and caring for others, which was one of the many things about Laura that simultaneously drove Natasha insane and made her fall even more deeply in love with her.


End file.
